The exploding charge also tore open the steel tank that held hundreds more gallons of liquid gas. Encountering the superheated atmosphere, the fuel expanded into gas. In the absence of oxygen — the available atmospheric oxygen had been consumed by the first flash of flame — the unburned gas surged outward. When it mixed with the atmosphere, it also flamed.

Though the Nazi personnel did not suffer dismemberment, all of the personnel in the south half of the cave received instantaneous third-degree burns. Then the wave of flame enveloped the helicopters and aviation fuel.

Av-gas became superheated. It burned, radiating a flash-temperature of three thousand degrees Centigrade. Every combustible object or substance — wood, hoses, insulated wires, tires, fuel, clothing, hair, skin fat — burst into flame.

In the center of the flames, the staff offices became the crematorium of the Nazi commanders and the handful of Guatemalan army officers who had betrayed their country to Unomundo's European doctrine.

The hired commandos sleeping in the steel barracks knew a few seconds of confusion and agony as they woke to red hot walls and superheated air. When they screamed at the shock of their waking nightmare, they scorched their lungs, and died choking seconds later. As the flames and heat continued, the glowing barracks baked the dead men's bodies. Fat flowed and burned, contributing to the inferno.

Mercenaries and technicians in the open felt only an instant of pain before their bodies became ash.

Outside, a few of the mercenaries near the mouth of the cavern turned to the roar. The heat-flash melted their faces. Others threw themselves down. Those near the fire received third-degree burns, their uniforms first smoking, then bursting into flame.

Unomundo sprawled under the corpses of three of his bodyguards. Stunned by a head wound caused by a .33-caliber steel ball that had punched through the head of one of his bodyguards to tear through his own left cheek and ear, Unomundo saw the diffused glare of the inferno. He did not suffer burns. The bodies of his guards had saved him. He heard screams, then autofire from a dozen rifles.

Knowing that his lifelong dream had been shattered only hours before he made it reality, he lay still. Now he plotted survival.

Heat searing their backs, Lyons and Nate sprinted into the shelter of the parked trucks and buses. A Quiche saw them, mistook them for mercenaries. As he raised his M-16, another Quiche knocked the rifle aside, a single shot ripping through the side of the bus.

"Get the Nazi clothes off, spookman!" Nate shouted at him over the screaming and shooting and the roar of the burning cavern complex. He ripped off his shirt to expose his light skin and bandage of red cloth.

"Politician!" Lyons called out.

"Your armor's up here!" Blancanales answered.

Climbing the side ladder to the cargo rack of a bus, he saw Blancanales on the bus roof, snapping single shots into Nazi mercenaries. Every shot killed. Blancanales sighted on two meres dragging a burned comrade to the cover of a truck, and he triggered a 40mm grenade. Steel-wire shrapnel shredded the three.

"How many still alive?" Lyons yelled, going prone beside his partner. Blancanales had already discarded his own Nazi shirt. He wore his black bat-tie armor and a red Indian shirt whose sleeves would identify him in the firefight.

"Maybe fifty, sixty. Most of the ones doing the torture, some drivers, some officers."

Lyons took grenades and his heavy Kevlar and steel trauma-plate battle armor from the pack. He stripped off his gray shirt, started to put on the armor. He found one of Nate's hand-sewn cotton shirts folded inside the armor, the cotton fabric woven in the design and color of Marylena's Quiche village.

"The shirt's for you," Blancanales told him. He touched the cloth of his own shirtsleeves. "Magic."

"With Kevlar and steel plates, it's magic."

"What about Unomundo?"

"Got him. Put him and his bodyguards down with a full-auto chop job," Lyons grinned. He slapped his Atchisson. "Lyons's Crowd Killing Device."

Lyons pulled on the red shirt, then the battle armor, and he watched the Huey troopship that hovered above the scene. The troopship stayed at a thousand feet, only observing.

Blancanales glanced at Lyons's new uniform — black armor, red sleeves pinstriped with yellow and purple, black nylon bandoliers and gray pants.

"No one's mistaking you for a Nazi, most definitely."

Gadgets came up the ladder. He also wore a red shirt under his armor. "Did we kill that Nazi?"

"The Ironman did."

"Where's the body?"

Lyons pointed. In the light of the inferno, he saw the tangled corpses of the bodyguards. "In that pile."

Blancanales jammed another 40mm round in the M-203 fitted under his M-16. "Now they die again."

The 40mm grenade hit one of the corpses. High-velocity steel tore the bodies a second time.

"War's over, gentlemen," Lyons told his partners. "Now it's payback and bodycount."

With a salute, he went down the ladder. His Atchisson cocked and locked, his thigh pockets heavy with grenades, he jogged between the rows of vehicles, searching for targets.

The body of a mercenary lay in the narrow walk-space. Point-blank autofire had killed him, then machetes had dismembered the torso. At the end of the bus, an Indian fired quick bursts from his M-16. Lyons neared him and called out: "Qui-chay, qui-chay." To identify himself, Lyons spoke the only word he knew of their language.

As he dropped out a spent magazine, the fighter nodded to Lyons. Slugs slammed into the sheet metal of the bus, windows broke above them as a mercenary sprayed auto-fire.

Taking cover behind the double rear wheels of the bus, Lyons dropped flat and peered under the frame. He saw a muzzle flash. More bullets tore through the bus.

The mercenary also had the shelter of heavy-duty wheels. Though return fire from the Indians had flattened the truck tires, the steel-belted rubber and the steel rims stopped the 5.56mm bullets from the M-16s. Lyons had a solution.

Konzaki had included two magazines of one-ounce steel-cored slugs with Lyons's 12-gauge ammunition. Dropping the magazine of shot shells out of his Atchisson, he slapped in the magazine of slugs. Sighting on the muzzle flash, he fired three quick blasts.

The chambered shell sprayed the mercenary with double ought and Number Two steel shot. Then the Atchisson's bolt fed the first of the slugs into the chamber. Traveling 1,200 feet per second at four inches off the gravel, the first slug tore through the tire, then continued through the gunman's body. The second punched through the wheel to again rip the Nazi's body. The autofire stopped.

Dashing out, the Indian ran to the other side of the truck. Lyons followed. A burst of fire from the Indian's M-16 shattered the dead merc's skull.

Lyons and the Indian continued, covering one another as they ran from walkspace to walkspace. They passed an Indian with a bullet-torn arm. He sat against a truck wheel, binding the wound with a strip of cloth. Lyons paused to check the man's injury for arterial bleeding. Despite the pain, the Indian smiled and waved Lyons past.

Indians fired at the two trucks in the center of the parking area. The two tortured men still lay on the steel beams. In two groups, mercenaries clustered behind the protection of the trucks. Several autorifles flashed.

Lyons's hand-radio buzzed. "What goes?"

"One of them's radioing that helicopter," Gadgets told him. "Politician's listening now..."

Blancanales's voice came on the frequency. "Unomundo's still alive."

"What?"

"Wounded but alive. The helicopter's coming down for him."

A voice called out from trucks in Spanish. Nate shouted back. Lyons crept down the line of fighters to the North American ex-Marine.